brayzie

Why would they? He was killed way after 2pac was shot in Vegas.

How is Puffy portrayed in the film?
Do they go into Tupac and Suge's beef with Dr. Dre?
I'm gonna take a wild guess that Dr. Dre's reputation is pretty clean in the film.

DaveyJoe

Tupac trained in ballet and acting at the Baltimore school of arts. The thug persona was for his career which eventually escalated to tragedy.

brayzie

None of that necessarily contradicts what Deadman was saying. I doubt it was just an image to sell records. Tupac jumped one of the Hughes brothers with a bunch of Crip gang members. He was claiming a Blood gang at the time of his death. He claimed he had sex with Faith Evans, not in those words, and sent death threats to people in his music.

Do you mean to imply that going to a good school means you can't be a bad person?

DaveyJoe

I'm implying that he was a talented human being that was much more than just a thug. I think Tupac's persona was a self-fulfilling prophecy due to the media's portrayal of rappers at the time. I found Deadman's description dismissive. The people on this forum tend to have negatively biased attitudes toward black rappers, even demonizing at times.

brayzie

Well yeah. If you're a fan of an artist, you're more inclined to find excuses for their behavior.

Doubt it. It probably was partially due to the fact that gangsta rap was more profitable since NWA blew up.
I mean, you think it was the media's portrayal of rappers, not the rapper's portrayals of themselves that romanticized gang culture?
NWA was rapping about being gangsters, killing women. Dr. Dre beat up Dee Barnes, and NWA was even interviewed saying that she deserved it. And yet the criticism of Dre by other rappers was that he wasn't a REAL gangster.
Snoop and DJ Quik were putting references to their gangs in their music.


I'm a fan of Tupac's music since I was in high school and even I'll admit he was an asshole, and probably a bad dude.

So you're assuming Deadman is biased towards black rappers based on other forum members opinions? Tupac got a second chance after being bailed out of prison and was still promoting the most poisonous type of thinking in his music, while putting 1 or 2 uplifting songs on his albums.

DaveyJoe

I'm not, I always preferred Biggie.


It's a chicken or the egg situation. Extremely talented rappers like Killah Priest couldn't get signed because they didn't embrace thug culture. Gangster rap exploded in the 90s, and if you wanted to be successful, you had to chase it. But this is the time that violence was blamed on everything from rap, to video games, to heavy metal. Did those forms of entertainment glamorize or persuade people to violence? There's not much evidence to suggest that, but the media's demonizing of them only made them more popular with kids, which contributed to the cycle. Music/games/movies had to be violent because kids were buying them, kids were buying them because media made them taboo.


Based on the overwhelming trends on this forum and his comment in the context of this thread, yes. He certainly didn't convey open-mindedness.

The tone of the trailer is very simply trying to appeal to Tupac fans to maximize profits. It's the smart approach from a marketing perspective.

Throwing Copper

This made nearly $13 million on Friday. So it's going to have a good first weekend.

brayzie

Fine. You're a fan of the sub-genre.

Well if the demand wasn't there for conscious rap anymore I can see why labels might be hesitant to sign him. Everything has its time before going out of fashion. I remember conscious rap being popular, then gangsta rap being popular, then the shiny suit/bling era, Kanye West and Lil Wayne and a whole slew of weirdo avant garde shit, then you got drill music being popular, the list goes on.

Well earlier you were implying that the media can influence entertainers, but it's unthinkable that entertainers could influence listeners.

You claim again that the media has enough power to influence, but not entertainment. Which is funny considering how much money is put into product placement in films and television.

Then you have stuff like this:
Rappers and Product Placement article.

In my own experience, I would say that entertainment definitely has the potential to influence people, especially young kids, positively or negatively.

A couple articles here and here, on a rap cd that came out when I was in high school, which unfortunately had a big impact in my area. It was used as a gang recruitment tool while simultaneously encouraging active gang members to commit more violence.



First off, music/games/movies don't have to be violent just because there is a demand there. The producers of that content have a choice, just like the parents have a choice in what to buy/show their kids.



I don't see what was inaccurate about what he said. Shit, I agree with him and I'm a fan of Tupac and Hip-Hop in general.

And yeah, I get the movie is about making profits, it's smart from a marketing perspective, just like it's smart for record labels to exploit ignorance that's detrimental to the community in order to make $$$$$$$$$. I'm not a fan of biographies which seem to border on hagiography, whether they be about musicians, politicians, or sports figures.

That said, I think Tupac Resurrection was a good movie that better showcases his artistic side and the experiences that helped develop it. I remember my friends not liking it saying it made Tupac look gay, and that they put in too many embarrassing things like his doing ballet. They wanted the rah-rah sensational stuff.

Tupac Vs was another movie I saw that interviewed him from Clinton Correctional Facility. He had a very charismatic presence and I doubt the new movie will manage to capture even a fraction of that.

Why So Blu?

Speaking of Tupac -- I hope they release Gridlock'd on BD someday. I always liked that flick.

csant

What I find strange is how these two shooting have been unsolved for so long. Not one person has drop a dime and what not. That's some serious shit...

I was always a bigger biggie fan and never really got into Tupac music. I did watch all his movies, he was good in them.

The movie was ok, nothing special.

DaveyJoe

And if you were trying to make it during gangsta rap's heyday, I can understand why rappers might feel compelled to embrace the thug culture. Black guys from poor communities don't always have a lot of opportunities to achieve the American dream. Sports and music have been the two most reliable industries for finding success for some time now.


Neither one of us can prove that violent rap influenced communities or people made violent rap popular, which is why I framed it as a chicken/egg situation. Parents and media have blamed violent entertainment for decades now but I have seen no statistical evidence that could prove that link. I personally believe that the drug war is responsible for the violence in poor communities, and hip hop listeners took to gangsta rap because it was relatable to the violence they experienced in everyday life.

Another thing is that I see a double standard, particularly among people who might visit sites like this. We have people who pop in their Reservoir Dogs bluray, then play Grand Theft Auto, and summarily dismiss criticisms of the violence in those forms of media, but when it comes to rap music... yeah, that might be a problem. Why is one form of violent entertainment harmless, but another dangerous?

Come on, you go where the money is. When Mortal Kombat hit it big, you saw a slew of violent copy cat fighting games. Artists like Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus go through a variety of personas until they figure out what sells. Countless musicians sell their soul to some extent just to find success. As a hip hop fan, this is one of the more frustrating forums I frequent in how quickly people dismiss the genre as garbage music for thugs.



The post was made in September 2016, far too soon to dismiss the film for whitewashing a flawed person. Good biopics embrace the good with the bad, and from a dramatic perspective, I can't comprehend why a movie would want to diminish elements of violent and provocative behavior. To me it seemed like frustration that a single trailer didn't serve as confirmation of the negative portrayal of a thug. As for the biopics, I'll probably wait for Steve McQueen's version.

E Unit

I like Tupac's music, but I have no interest in seeing this. Maybe an HBO viewing at some point.

Also, looks like it may not be 100% accurate. So surprising.

Troy Stiffler

Not surprised by Jada's clarifications. This movie comes across as a glorified movie of the week type biopic. I assume it got the green light because Straight Out of Compton was a hit.

Maybe we'll get a prestigious Tupac biopic someday. But I really doubt this is it.

Throwing Copper

It is really too bad that John Singleton dropped out of directing this. But apparently he was going to tell it like it is, and whomever didn't want it that way.

Baron Of Hell

A few years back a documentary came out on 2pac, it was great. Also the commentary on it was great, it was like getting two movies in one.

brayzie

No, but you dismiss one possibility while entertaining your own, which conveniently blames everything else: the media making Tupac a thug, media criticism making gangsta rap popular, and the drug war causing violence in communities.

I agree, those are contributing factors, except for the first one.

And Hip-Hop listeners aren't all from the hood nor do they all experience violence on a day-to-day basis. Hip-Hop has been a mainstream form of music for a while now, and there were nerdy white kids in my school that had more gangsta rap cds than I did. You put a catchy beat behind something and you can make just about anything sound cool. And for the listeners who do grow up in that kind of environment, gangsta rap/drill music/etc only help to reinforce that culture as normal and acceptable.

As for the drug war, yeah it probably made things worse, but even before that there were gangs preying on their own communities. In California we have gangs that have been here since the 1940s way before the Nixon took office. In NY there's gangs and mafia that go back waaaay before that. It's not just banned substances, it's prostitution, extortion, credit card scams, basically any racket that will make them money illegally. And look at the south. You had one big gang/terrorist organization, the KKK committing violence because...black people were free.

Speaking of negative influence via entertainment, there's the 1916 film Birth of a Nation based on the book The Klansman.

So yeah, I don't get why some people are so quick to discourage the idea that entertainment can influence. Unless you think that entertainment like the above film is okay?

That's not me.


Yeah, I understand that. That's a problem when people put profit ahead of social responsibility.

When I've come across a post dismissing Kanye West as garbage, I feel the same way.

But the guy you quoted didn't even criticize the music.


Because many biopics don't have a good balance of good with the bad. They romanticize or rationalize the bad aspects while playing up the good.
Look at Straight Outta Compton. They made Dr. Dre look like this brave dude who's knocking out Bloods, and NOT beating up women like he did with Dee Barnes and Michel'le. Even in movies like Donnie Brasco they change the story so that Donnie would risk his career and case to give a mobster 100k in stolen money to buy a boat and leave, when in reality the real Donnie Brasco said that never happened. It's done so audiences can better empathize with the subject of the biopic.

DaveyJoe

It depends on what you mean by okay. I think people should have the freedom to make racist entertainment, and hopefully society would condemn it. I think people should have the right to make violent movies, video games, and music. It's up to the individual how they interpret it and react to it. I like violent movies and hip hop, but I don't think they've influenced me to act against my understanding of right and wrong.

I think humans are inherently violent by nature, and art/entertainment can serve as an outlet for those base tendencies. If gangsta rap didn't exist, I think people who have the capacity of violence against others would find another influence for those urges. As you said, gangs existed before gangsta rap, until we reach a Star Trek utopia, human beings will find ways to exert power over others, often through violent means.

Does entertainment or art influence people? Of course. When I was a kid I went outside and played Power Rangers with my friends. However I think pointing at entertainment as a catalyst for violence serves as a scapegoat, and takes accountability away from the individual. It's not okay to call your girlfriend a bitch just because rappers do. I'm a clean cut white guy, and I see gangsta rap as escapist entertainment, just like Pulp Fiction and Battlefield.

I admit that violent media can be troubling for people who struggled to separate right from wrong or fantasy from reality, but condemning the media is not a viable solution. I think those people will just find another reason to hurt others, religion is a popular one these days.



Okay, fine, I'm not accusing you specifically of anything. I'm explaining trends I notice on this forum, and how that shaped my original comment.



And it's totally possible that I'm way off base and jumped to an incorrect conclusion. So many posters here have an unfair perception of rappers that I just like to tip the scale in the other direction.



I agree that this is done for dramatic purposes, for better or worse. I'm watching Narcos and they balance scenes of Pablo Escobar loving his family with ordering hits on police officers. To be fair, balance makes movies more interesting. Irredeemable villains or perfect, shiny heroes aren't very compelling. Of course, we all have bias when it comes to real people. Tupac fans might think that certain negative criticisms are unfair, whereas people who hate the guy's work will probably think the movie is too soft on him. I guess at the end of the day, true objectivity is hard to achieve.

raven56706

anyone watch it?

DRG

I saw it. It wasn't terrible, but still felt rather generic. The script was the major problem... it just felt like they were going through life events without a real sense of a cohesive narrative flow. You see the events happen in Tupac's life, but they didn't do a great job of showing how these transformations took place. Like one minute he's in Digital Underground having fun, and the next scene he's recording this serious rap track.

There's also a weird dynamic that happens in later parts of the film where there's a conflict with somebody and the scene slows down on that person, as if to be hinting, "Maybe THIS guy is responsible for Tupac's death". They did it a few times and it just felt weird in this type of film.